How to save sent Outlook E-mail to a folder other than the Sent Items folder

Summary

This article describes how to automate Microsoft Outlook 2002 to programmatically send e-mail messages from Visual FoxPro (VFP) 7.0 and later versions of Visual FoxPro, and have those messages saved in a folder other than the Sent Items folder.

More Information

VFP developers often write applications that perform bulk e-mail operations. After the messages are sent, it is sometimes desirable to save the messages to a folder other than the default Sent Items folder. In this way, the messages sent by the application are kept separate from other messages sent through the same client, making them easier to find later.

Although it is possible to programmatically specify a folder in which to save your sent e-mail messages (by using the CdoPR_SENTMAIL_ENTRYID CDO constant), the setting is ignored because the CDO (1.x) library hard-codes the value placed in the PR_SENTMAIL_ENTRYID field to the Sent Items folder. For additional information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

You can work around this problem by using the COPYTO() method of your e-mail message object to relocate the message to a folder of your choice before it is sent.

The sample code below makes a copy of the message before it is sent, as opposed to moving or copying the message after it is sent. We do this because Outlook messages are typically not sent instantly; they may sit in the Outlook Outbox for a short time. As a result, code running in a loop that relies on a message being located in the default Sent Items folder may fail.

The only drawback to this approach is that you will have a copy of the message in your alternate Sent Items folder even if the message was not successfully sent. This is not a major drawback, however, because people most often wish to retain sent messages for reference, not as proof of delivery.

Note This code was written and tested with VFP 7.0 and later versions of Visual FoxPro. With slight modification, it will work with any version of VFP. It was tested with Microsoft Outlook 2002 on a computer that is running Microsoft Office XP and Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, but should also work with Office 2000.

The VFP 7.0 code below will do the following:

Log on to MAPI.SESSION.

Compose a new e-mail message.

Scan your message store(s) for the ID of the folder that you specify as your alternate Sent Items folder.

Copy the in-progress message to your alternate Sent Items folder and then send the message.

To use this sample code, follow these steps:

Open Outlook, create a new folder, and name it "My Sent Items". You can create the folder as a subfolder in any message store that you like.

Copy the code below to a new program in VFP 7.0.

Save and then run the program.

*-----------------------------------* ABSTRACT: This sample code sends an e-mail message to the address* you specify. It then saves this message to a folder other* than the default Sent Items Outlook folder.** To use this code, create a new folder in Outlook named* "My Sent Items". You can later rename this folder to anything* you like, provided that you change the 1st #DEFINE* below accordingly.*-----------------------------------#DEFINE New_Sent_Folder "My Sent Items"#DEFINE CdoDefaultFolderSentItems 3

*~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~FUNCTION FindNewFolder(lpoSession AS OBJECT)LOCAL loInfoStores AS OBJECT, ;loRootFolder AS OBJECT, ;liStoreCnt AS INTEGER

*-- Get an obj reference to the message stores in Outlook.loInfoStores = lpoSession.InfoStores

*-- Walk through the message store(s) (except any*-- Public Folders) looking for a folder with the same name*-- as the "New_Sent_Folder" constant.FOR liStoreCnt = 1 TO loInfoStores.COUNTIF !("PUBLIC FOLDERS" $ UPPER(loInfoStores.ITEM(liStoreCnt).NAME))loRootFolder = loInfoStores.ITEM(liStoreCnt).RootFolderWalkSubFolders(loRootFolder)

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